Poor Lana had had a near-death experience yet again. She had been to the Smallville High pool and one of their fellow students, Jake Pollen, tried to drown her. Fortunately for her, someone shot her attacker before he could kill her.
Pete picked up the latest issue of the Torch that Chloe and Emmeline had spent all night working on. The front page story was all about Lana's latest adventure.
"Looks like you got yourself a pinch hitter in the hero arena," Pete told Clark as he handed him the paper before taking Emmeline's hand.
"I don't know if I'd call him a hero, Pete," Clark said. "I'm just glad Lana's okay."
"Yeah, I know. Have you seen her?"
"I'm not exactly the person Lana wants to be around right now."
They passed Jake's locker that was being investigated by several police officers.
"Keep it moving," Sheriff Adams ordered to the students who had stopped to watch them work.
"I still can't believe Jake turned Swimfan on Lana," Pete remarked.
Chloe walked up and joined them. "Yeah, I didn't peg him as the poolside-slasher type either. But I don't think Jake Pollen was exactly like your average teenager."
"Why would you say that?" Clark asked as they all entered the Torch office.
Chloe scoffed. "Other than the meteor rock labeled 'freak' laid next to his body?" She took a seat at her computer. "You remember that field trip we took down to Crater Lake, the one where I, uh, dropped so gracefully my keys off of the pier?"
"Yeah, I thought you were gonna call the Navy S.E.A.L.s," Pete joked.
"Jake fished them out for you," Clark recalled.
"Right, and he was under water for six minutes," Chloe told them. "Now unless you're David Blaine or a Himalayan yoga master, that's impossible."
Clark looked at her computer screen and noticed that she had pulled up one of her programs that revealed a list of names. "Hey, what's with the list?"
"Oh, just my hunches, you know, sort of anything that's off the charts. It's kind of a purgatory before you graduate to the Wall of Weird."
"You have a full file of Jake?"
Chloe clicked on Jake's name and his picture popped up with some other information about him. "Well, I started suspecting a while ago that he had amphibious abilities due to the meteor rock exposure for a while."
"You don't think you might be stretching with this one, Chloe?" Pete asked.
"I don't think Jake is the mysterious one," Clark told them. "I mean, don't you think it's a little strange? Rifle-wielding commando shows up right when Lana's getting attacked?"
"If you want to help track down the enigmatic vigilante, I would be willing to explore the Jake angle," Chloe said.
Clark looked at her for a few seconds. "That would be assuming I actually had a job here."
"Yeah, it was never clear about whose choice it was for you to quit."
Emmeline and Pete shared a small smile with each other, seeing that their two friends were finally getting along again.
"Look, Clark," Chloe continued. "I could say that I'm swamped with the Daily Planet column, but the truth is it would just be really nice to have you back."
Clark smiled warmly, and just like that, he had his job at the Torch back.
The bell rang and Pete stood up. "I gotta get to class."
He gave Emmeline a quick peck on the lips before heading out of the office.
Emmeline looked back to find Clark and Chloe smiling at her knowingly. "What?"
Chloe smirked. "Just saying, I called this months ago."
Emmeline rolled her eyes and got to work proofreading the next issue.
Once Emmeline and Chloe got evidence about Jake, they headed down to the Talon to show Lana and Clark what they had found.
Chloe decided to ignore the extreme tension between them and just walked right through them.
"Hey, so we can rule out the Himalayan yoga masters. Check out what my connection at the coroner's office gave me." She pulled out the pictures she had that revealed slits in Jake's skin and set them out on the counter. "You're not gonna see any of this in Jake's official autopsy report. Believe it or not, they're gills."
"That's disgusting," Lana remarked.
"Personally, I find the gaping bullet wound more disturbing," Clark said.
Lana looked at him in disbelief. "Okay, if that shooter hadn't shown up when he did, I'd be dead. So forgive me if I don't have more sympathy for the gill-boy who tried to drown me."
"Jake was exposed to the meteor rocks. He didn't ask for them."
"No, just like Ian Randall didn't ask to be able to duplicate himself and Tina Greer didn't ask to become a bone morpher. Look, the fact is when they got their powers, they went psycho and tried to kill me. Tina even came back for seconds. Chloe's been attacked by more of these people than me." She looked over at her friend. "You remember Justin Gaines and Sean Kelvin."
Chloe gave her a thin smile. "Yeah. One tried to psychically impale me with farm implements and the other just wanted my body heat. Thanks for the memories."
"Even Em has had her share. Greg Arkin?"
"Yeah, how could I forget the bug boy who tried to mate with me?" Emmeline said dryly.
"I'm just saying a shot in the head is a little more extreme," Clark tried to defend himself.
"What about all the times that you've saved us from these people, Clark?" Lana asked hardly. "What makes you so different from this shooter?"
"For starters, I've never killed anyone."
"Then how do you explain Tina Greer? The police found her body impaled in the alley."
"What happened to her she did to herself. I was protecting you."
"Spoken like a true vigilante."
Emmeline sighed heavily. She considered Lana a good friend, but it really annoyed her when she got incredibly defensive about herself and refused to listen to anyone else's opinions when her mind was set.
"Lana, you may think that way, but what about when the meteors helped us all figure out what happened when Chloe was kidnapped? If you hadn't been affected by them, she might've died."
Lana looked at her guiltily for a second. "That doesn't change the fact that all three of us might've died because of these freaks."
Emmeline looked away from her. Those people may have been freaks, but Clark was right. They didn't ask for it.
There was a knock on Emmeline's door and when she answered it, Chloe was standing there, looking extremely panicked.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Emmeline asked.
"…You know how last year, Lionel Luthor came to me and offered me that Daily Planet column if I provided him with information about Clark?"
Emmeline's face dawned with realization. "Chloe, what have you done?"
"Something I shouldn't have."
Emmeline allowed Chloe to come into her home and they both sat on the couch. "You told me that you got the column at the Daily Planet because it had already been set up and Lionel couldn't change it."
"I know. That wasn't true. I just didn't want you to know that I accepted his offer. Because I knew what you would say, and I didn't want to hear it. I did this right after my confrontation with Clark when I found out he and Lana were lying to me about their relationship. I was just so hurt that I wasn't thinking straight. And now…I'm in trouble."
"Why? What's up?"
"Lionel won't let me go. I tried to sever our ties today, and he threatened to fire my dad if I did."
Emmeline sighed. "I hate that man."
"Me too. And now I don't know what to do."
"I wish I could give you all the answers, but I don't have them. For now, I would recommend staying away from Lionel as much as possible. And we shouldn't let Clark know about this."
"Agreed."
The next day, Clark was sitting at his computer working on his story and Emmeline was proofreading when Chloe came into the room.
"Hey. Remember the rock that was tossed next to Jake's body with the word 'freak' written on it? It wasn't the first one the police found." She pulled out a picture of a man neither of them had seen before. "Meet Leonard Wallace, a local mechanic gunned down two weeks ago. Someone put a similar rock next to his body."
"Why do you think he was killed?" Clark asked.
"I can't be sure about that, but last month when my VW Bug was in the shop, I swear I saw his arm reach for a wrench three feet under my car. I started a file on him just in case he had some sort of stretching abilities. But unlike Jake, Wallace never went psycho."
"So Lana's mystery hero isn't out to save anyone. He's hunting them."
"Smallville's own version of a hate crime. But why?"
Clark thought for a second. "Revenge." He turned his computer around to reveal what he had been researching. It was a newspaper article about a murdered veteran. "Van McNulty's father was a marine recruiter who was killed by Tina Greer."
"Tina's dead, so he decides to go Terminator on the rest."
"Van's fighting his own personal war."
Emmeline looked at her friends. "Tina really was nuts. Even more than Greg and that's seriously saying something."
Later that day, Clark came running into the office wondering why Van had gone after Lex.
"Think about it, Clark," Chloe said. "Lex survived the meteor shower, a near-fatal car accident, and a plane crash. Even he doesn't have enough money to afford a guardian angel with that much clout. Check this out." She pulled up a file on Lex similar to Jake's. "Lex's medical records show that he has a white blood cell count that is off the charts. I mean, it's more than enough to raise an eyebrow."
"You've been keeping a file on Lex, too," Clark said a bit ticked off. "Chloe, didn't you learn your lesson about keeping your secret files?"
"They're my own private notes. Since when is curiosity a crime?"
"Since someone took your database and turned it into a personal hit list. Van had a printout of the same file on his bulletin board."
Chloe looked at the screen in shock. "Van helped network half these computers. He must've cracked my password. Oh, Clark. This is all my fault."
Emmeline came over to her friend and rubbed her shoulder encouragingly. "No, it's not."
"Chloe, I'm sorry," Clark apologized. "I didn't mean to blame you. It's not like you pulled the trigger."
"No, I just loaded the gun and pointed it in the right direction," Chloe told him tearfully.
Emmeline was in the Torch office alone getting some proofreading done. It was rare that she was there without Chloe, but it happened. She was just trying to get everything done quickly so she could stop by Pete's house for a little while.
She looked up at the sound of yelling not far from the office. She slowly walked out, being careful not to make any noises with her shoes, and went to the source of the shouts.
Emmeline jumped when she heard gunshots ring out through the halls. She finally found the source of the commotion. Van had Lana tied up on the floor behind him while he shot at Clark.
Clark remained unharmed.
"I told you he was a freak," Van said to Lana.
Lana looked over and saw Emmeline watching the confrontation. They locked eyes and nodded. Emmeline jumped out of her hiding spot and punched Van in the face. Lana then delivered a spin-kick and he crashed into the glass display case next to them.
"You're the freak," Lana said. She walked up to Clark as Emmeline undid the ropes binding her hands behind her. "Clark, how did you…"
"It's all about dressing for the occasion," Clark told them.
He opened his shirt and they found his whole chest covered in lead with meteor rock bullets wedged in it.
"What is that, lead?" Lana asked.
Clark smiled at them. Emmeline could not understand how his mind worked. Who would've possibly thought to cover their body in lead?
The next night, both Emmeline and Chloe were working in the Torch office. Emmeline had insisted that after the previous night, she was not going to be working there by herself again for a while.
"You hit a glitch, Miss Sullivan?"
Both of them turned to find Lionel Luthor walking into the room. Emmeline's heart sank.
"Could you give us a minute, Miss Brooks?"
Emmeline nodded without a word and left the room. However, she stayed right outside the door out of Lionel's sight so that she could hear the following conversation.
"I know a very capable computer technician who might have some familiarity with your setup."
"How could I be so idiotic?" Chloe berated herself. "You donate the computers and then send your experts in to set them up."
"Yeah, philanthropy. I've always prided myself on that."
"What about tampering with a high school student's personal computer?"
"I think you'll find your personal computer is on loan to the school as the property of the LuthorCorp foundation."
"You are so low, you're subterranean. You know, Clark's files aren't even on this hard drive. Do you really think I'd be that stupid?"
"My interest doesn't end with Clark Kent. I'm intrigued by your whole body of work. I'd hate to see your valuable research evaporate into ether, but I will not allow information that concerns my son to be made available to anyone who can hack their way into your personal files."
"Mr. Luthor, I'm very sorry about what happened to Lex. These files were never meant to be seen by anyone other than me."
"I warn you. If I ever catch you investigating a member of my family again, a computer glitch will be the least of your problems." There was a pause before he added, "Good night, Miss Sullivan."
Realizing he was about to come out, Emmeline quickly and quietly rounded the corner before he figured out that she had been eavesdropping. Once the coast was clear, she slowly entered the office again.
"Chloe…"
"I don't even know how he found out about this list…"
"You have to tell someone about this. He threatened you."
"It's my word against his, Em. And Lionel Luthor knows how to turn things in his favor. Even if I told someone, it would only hurt me in the end."
Emmeline walked to her car at the end of the school day, eager to go to Pete's house to do some homework and watch a movie.
"Emmeline?" someone said cautiously.
Emmeline turned to find a woman approaching her. She didn't know why, but she swore that she had seen this woman before.
"Do I know you?" she asked with a polite smile.
"Well…sort of. I guess, in a way, I'm part of you."
Emmeline's eyes widened.
"Mom?"
